


objects in mirror are closer than they appear

by jonphaedrus



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Barbed Penis, Cat Ardyn, Dream Sex, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Tricksters, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:49:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9645065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: There was a cat on Cor’s doorstep. It was, hands down, the most miserable looking creature he had ever seen—it was huge, easily twenty pounds at a go, its fur thick and white with orange markings on it, and amber and green eyes that stared balefully back up at him. It looked like it was more water than fur, which was a feat, and the clearly normally-fluffy tail it had wrapped around its paws was straggly and stringy.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thetealord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetealord/gifts).



> this is probably the stupidst and shittiest thing i have written in months and id like to preemptively apologise for how fifteen shades of crap this is but james is sick and i want him to feel better so: behold! a catboy au.

There was a cat on Cor’s doorstep. It was, hands down, the most miserable looking creature he had ever seen—it was huge, easily twenty pounds at a go, its fur thick and white with orange markings on it, and amber and green eyes that stared balefully back up at him. It looked like it was more water than fur, which was a feat, and the clearly normally-fluffy tail it had wrapped around its paws was straggly and stringy.

Very slowly, it opened its mouth, yawned, and _mrow_ ed imperiously at Cor, one tufted ear flicking. Its meow was the deepest damn meow Cor had ever heard from a cat, melodious and rich. “No,” he replied, jangling his keys at the cat. “I don’t have any stuff for you. Go somewhere else.” The cat continued to stare at him, unblinking, tail tip thwapping his wet doorstep. The cat was directly between him and the door, and Cor either had to dump it back in the rain or let it in. “I don’t even have anything for you to eat. You can’t come in.” He knew what cats were like; once they were in, they lived there. Cor was not making that mistake. “I’m sorry.”

The cat looked at him, and then, very sadly, stood up and rubbed along the ankle of his boot, half-toppled sideways, and Cor realised suddenly the cat was limping, shivering, dripping wet, and—

“Fuck,” Cor said, and picked the cat up. It dug all of its claws into his jacket and slammed its face into his ear, purring as loudly as a vacuum cleaner, rubbing its cold, wet whiskers over his cheek and hair as it started to clean the stubble of his sideburn. “Ew,” he told the cat, without a hint of heat in it, as he unlocked the front door and stepped into his condo, the cat practically vibrating with happiness in his arms as it crawled up onto his shoulders, making Cor _oof_ in surprise. It weighed a ton, and was almost as big as his shoulders, twining back and forth, all its claws dug into his jacket. “Holy shit,” he muttered, pained, as he got the door shut and wrestled with his boots, grabbing for his phone as he hung his umbrella up to dry.

His call to Monica went through on the third ring. “Monica,” Cor said, and she gasped.

“Are you all right?” He blinked.

“Yeah?”

“You sound so out of breath—like you were carrying something heavy!” Cor grunted.

“Yeah, that’s why I’m calling.” He tilted sideways, and the cat—very unwillingly—hopped off of his shoulders to start trotting around his front hall, purring violently all the while, as Cor finally managed to fumble his boots off, then scooped the cat up again and went straight to the bathroom to get a towel to dry it off. “What do you feed cats if you haven’t got cat food?”

“Rice and fresh chicken breast, no salt,” Monica replied, without thinking, then, “You don’t have a cat. Why are you asking?”

“There was—hey, ow!” Cor yelped as the cat wriggled out of his arms, swatting him in the nose as it hopped onto his sink, purring, “There was a cat on my doorstep,” he explained, holding the phone to his ear with his shoulder as he got out a big towel and burritoed the cat. It meowed at him unhappily as he squished it, trying to work out some of the water soaking its fur. “And I brought it in.”

“Cor!” Monica sighed. “Never do that! They smell fear!”

“Yeah, I know, but seriously. So the rice thing—what do I do?”  
  
“Basically just make congee, but don’t add anything but the chicken.” Sounded gross, but okay. “That should be fine.” The cat meowed again. Monica cooed into his ear. “Cor, I need a photo!”

“I’m not keeping him!”

She laughed unkindly at him.

The cat inhaled two portions of the food Cor offered, and dried out as it ate, revealing a majestic body, huge and heavy and soft. When Cor got in bed to go to sleep, the cat hopped up in with him. “I was planning on turning you out,” he told the cat, who just ignored him and set to kneading his blankets, purring violently again, and then shoved its way under the blankets with him, curled up, and propped its head on Cor’s pillow beside him, blinked its big, emotive yellow eyes at him. “I don’t need a cat.”

The cat purred. And purred. And, as Cor fell asleep, kept purring.

 

 

When the rain stopped the following morning he let the cat out, but after that, the cat _would not leave_. It moved into his house, ate the food Cor provided, and slept curled up in his bed every night, purring against his face. “You need a name,” Cor told the cat, one evening, as he read reports from work, rubbing the cat’s belly where it lay next to him on the couch, spread-eagled and purring. Dry, its fur was incredibly soft, slightly wavy, and plush in its thickness. “I can’t just keep calling you cat.” The cat purred, happily. “Maybe...” Cor had never been good at naming things. He didn’t even know if the cat was male or female. “Kitty?” The cat sat up and glared at him, tail lashing. “Okay, no. Not Kitty. Snowy?” The cat hissed, got up, and left.

Cor was left bewildered.

Still, at bedtime, the cat climbed up into bed and Cor fell asleep with it purring by his ear, kneading his chest under the blankets, huge paws grabbing onto his pectorals, the sound lulling him easily into dreams.

 

 

There was a man on Cor’s chest. Cor felt like he was probably dreaming, but he’d never seen the man before, and he’d read somewhere once that your brain could only populate your dreams with the faces of people you had seen before. He was tall, as tall as Cor, and he had a sharp, feline face, with thick, maroon hair waving in loose curls around his jawline.

Where a normal human would have had ears, the man instead had two cat ears, flicking intently as they watched Cor. He had a matching tail, the same red as his hair, and he was absolutely completely naked, his cock hanging between his thighs, downy fur covering his groin and up his chest.

“Hello,” the man said, kneading Cor’s chest with his fingers. He had _very_ sharp nails, and when he smiled, very big canines. “We need to have a talk.”

“Excuse me?” Cor sputtered. The man leaned forward and bumped their foreheads together. His eyes were the most striking amber eyes Cor had ever seen—green around the irises. There was a tiny little beauty mark just below his left eye. “About what?”

“This _name_ nonsense,” the man continued, sprawling out on top of Cor, wiggling his hips. He was _completely naked_ and Cor was flushing under his strange attention, but didn’t try to wriggle away. “Kitty, really? Cor, I’m _insulted_.” Cor, in the logic of dreams, did not even begin to question this. He wasn’t sure how his cat had become a six-foot-two naked man currently kneading his nipples and naked on his lap, but. Sure. “You could have just asked.”

“I wasn’t aware cats could talk. Or write.”

“Well,” the man purred ( _purred_ , actually _purred_ , the noise rumbling low in his chest) “You never bothered to ask, did you?” Cor made a quiet little noise in the back of his throat as the man rubbed their noses together, dragged his nails none-too-gently over the peaked arcs of Cor’s nipples under the thin cotton of his nightshirt. “My name is Ardyn, and the salmon cans are _far_ superior to the chicken and cheese ones. But I don’t know why you won’t just give me that rice and chicken thing again, it was _fantastic.”_ He licked a raspy, rough tongue over Cor’s nose, making him wince, and sat up, putting all his weight suddenly onto Cor’s semi.

“What the hell kind of a dream is this,” Cor said, before he started to lose it to the depths of sleep.

He awoke the following morning to the cat—to _Ardyn_ —curled around the top of his head, purring and washing his hair and his own paw in equal strokes, and he stared at the cat, who blinked back at him with his big amber eyes. There was a tiny little mark just under his left eye, a small brown spot on his otherwise white and orange face. “What the fuck was that all about,” he told the cat, who just purred at him, and licked his nose.

Cor didn’t tell Monica about his Ardyn dream the first time, or the second time, when he awoke from it because Ardyn-the-cat not Ardyn-the-dream had fallen asleep on his chest, crushing his lungs and the breath out of him. He didn’t tell her the third time, either, when he’d woken up to Ardyn purring in his ear, _can I suck your dick_? And it was a dream, of course, but that didn’t make the sensation of the man’s barbed tongue rasping over the head of his erection any less strange, any less strangely good, and Cor got his fingers in Ardyn’s thick curls, moaned, thrust up into the back of his throat as the other man sucked him off, and somewhere when he woke up after coming in his pants, he found Ardyn-the-cat asleep on his lap, his fingers tangled deep into the cat’s thick fur.

He was purring again.

 

 

“Cor,” said dream-Ardyn, bent over Cor with his thick hair brushing over his face, his high cheekbones flushed, his cock hard and dripping pressed against the base of Cor’s stomach, the barbs scraping his skin above the waistline of his boxers, “Do you like me?”

“Yes?” Cor replied, baffled.

“Do you _love_ me?” Ardyn sounded petulant, and Cor tangled his fingers in the man’s thick, soft hair.

“People love their pets.” Ardyn _preened_ , and rolled his hips back against Cor.

“Am I your pet, Cor?” His mouth felt dry. Blowjobs from his dream-cat was one thing but this was not a blowjob. This was—Ardyn purring again, trailing his fingers over his cockhead, the tip dripping pre, licking his fingers off. Cor closed his eyes for a minute.

“Yes?” His voice was strangled. “These are such weird dreams. Why do I keep having dreams about fucking my cat?”

“Do you _not_ want to fuck me?” Ardyn replied, pouting at Cor. He hesitated, because no, he totally wanted to fuck the hot dream version of his cat. It was just a dream, after all. Couldn’t hurt anyone.

“No,” Cor replied, rolling his erection through his boxers up into the crack of Ardyn’s ass, his voice little breathy moans at the friction. “I definitely want to fuck you.” And Ardyn was whimpering, grabbing at Cor’s pecs again. Cor fumbled for his bedside table to get the lube, remembering where it was in his sleep, and slicked two fingers, brought them back behind Ardyn to slide over the other man’s ass, and his hole was all clenching, brutal heat around Cor’s fingers as he worked them up inside the other man, the first two tense but by the third Ardyn was moaning, his fingers in his mouth, his hair plastered to his face and neck with sweat as he begged and purred for Cor to get in him.

He didn’t really know how, but soon enough Cor was balls deep, and Ardyn was so fucking _scalding_ around his dick that Cor almost just came. Ardyn devolved out of begging to outright yowling, his tail lashing and his ears flat back against his skull, his back an artful curve as he rode Cor’s dick like the world was ending, panting and moaning and hissing and shrieking like a cat in heat as Cor found the right angle and got to watch as Ardyn came apart around him, thick tears on his eyelashes, moaning as his cock throbbed and spilled onto the base of Cor’s stomach and he clenched down so tight that Cor followed him over the edge, digging bruises into Ardyn’s hips.

He woke up with his own come all over his shirt, and stared at Ardyn where the cat was sprawled on the pillow next to him, dead asleep.

“Okay,” Cor said, “This is getting a little _too_ weird.”

 

 

“Monica,” Cor began, staring at his lunch the following afternoon, “Dreams aren’t real, right?” He glanced up just in time to see her set down her soda and peer at him, eyes narrowed. “The stuff we do in our dreams isn’t real.”

“The way you’re wording that has me worried,” Monica replied, very slowly, after a moment. “Like you did something stupid.”

“I didn’t!” Cor immediately replied, perhaps a case of _the Marshal doth protest too much._ “Well, I mean, I did. But it wasn’t a bad thing. Or I guess, not too bad of a thing? I don’t know.”

“Cor,” Monica sounded strangled. “What did you _do_?” Cor looked around, made sure there was nobody nearby, and then leaned his head over the table so that he could whisper,

“If I had a dream about fucking my cat does that make me a furry?”

Monica was completely unprepared for his secrecy, and responding by yelping, “You had a dream about _what_?” loud enough that people several tables over were looking. Cor made shushing motions desperately to try and get her to drop her volume. “Cor, like just the one time?”

“Well, there was one about a blowjob—“

“How long have you been dreaming of—“ Monica finally seemed to realise how loud she was being. “Really?” She asked, glaring at him. “ _Really_?”

“That’s why I’m asking you!” He pressed his face into his hands. “I’m not asking for these dreams! Like, do I need to talk to someone?”

“No,” she sputtered, “Just don’t _actually_ have sex with your cat. And, I dunno, try and wake yourself up next time? Jesus, men are weird.” Cor made an unhappy noise at her. It wasn’t like he’d wanted this to happen. It just kind of _had_.

 

 

Cor had two more sex dreams before he finally managed to wrest enough control to sit up and make Ardyn sprawl between his thighs, his tail lashing in annoyance and his high cheekbones flushed. “Okay,” Cor said, to himself and not to Ardyn, “This is weird and has to stop.” He pinched his hip, hard, and when that didn’t do anything, pinched it again. “Weird sex dreams because I can’t get laid are one thing but weird sex dreams about my cat are another.”

“Cor,” Ardyn whined, grabbing for his shoulders through his shirt, “I’m not a dream—“

“Yeah, you are. Cats don’t turn inexplicably into naked hot men except in bad tv shows.” Ardyn scowled at him. “I like my cat as a cat, not as a weird sex dream.”

“I thought you said you loved me,” Ardyn murmured, and his voice was hurt. Cor groaned.

“I don’t need to be having dreams about hurting my imaginary hot cat boyfriend’s feelings!” He had it something _bad_ for Regis if _this_ was how he was going about dealing with those emotions. “Can I wake up now, please?”

“Well,” Ardyn huffed, “If that’s how you’re going to be about it, then fine.”

 

 

Cor woke up the following morning and, for the first time in months, Ardyn wasn’t asleep in his bed. In fact, Ardyn wasn’t anywhere in the house. Cor wasn’t sure how he had gotten out, and the cat didn’t show up for days. Then a week. Then two.

They even put up signs and posted a reward on CraigsList, but no dice.

He had vanished back out of Cor’s life just s he had come into it, and he found himself missing his cat something awful. The two- and three-inch long white hairs caked onto all of his fur started to come out in his wash, and he went to bed every night miserable and lonely without Ardyn purring in his ear. He left out plates of food, but all that did was pick up neighbourhood strays.

“That happens with outdoor cats,” Monica told him, one afternoon. “They just sometimes go away. You did everything you could to find him.”

Cor had been too miserable to come up with anything constructive to say.

 

 

It was pouring one afternoon as Cor walked to his front door from parking his bike, and stopped dead in his tracks. There was a man sitting on his front doorstep, in possibly the _strangest_ amalgamation of clothes that Cor had ever seen. A fedora, boots with _two_ pairs of spats, what looked like flannel pyjama pants, two, possibly three vests, a shirt that looked like a circus tent, and a gigantic black coat that dwarfed him. The man had an umbrella hiding his face, staring out into the rain, and Cor stopped just in front of him at the bottom of the walk.

“Um,” Cor said, a little dumbfounded by the stranger on his porch, “Can I help you?”

The man looked up at him, and Cor’s heart both skipped a beat and launched directly up into his throat and out his mouth, because the face that looked back at him was the one he’d been seeing in his dreams for months. Ardyn blinked his big, baleful amber eyes up at him.

“Well?” Ardyn said, gesturing at himself. “I’m not imaginary _or_ a cat any more.”

“What,” Cor replied, staring at him, mouth halfway open. “I.” He was hallucinating. He had to be hallucinating. This was a hallucination. He picked up his phone out of his pocket, ignored the man speaking, and dialled Monica without looking.

“What?” She said, when he rang through.

“Do I sound like I’m hallucinating?” Cor said, immediately.

“I mean, that’s not a great way to start to proving if you aren’t. Why?”

“Ardyn’s on my doorstep.”

“Oh, I’m glad he came back! Is he all in one piece?” Cor groaned in frustration.

“No, not. Not my cat. The. The imaginary hot cat boyfriend I kept fucking in my dreams.”

“You said it only happened once!”

“Not important right now! Am I hallucinating? Can you come over here and take me to the ER?”

“I’m not a hallucination,” Ardyn snapped, angrily, baring his big canines. “And you can ask _me_ because you aren’t hallucinating! You said to make the dreams stop, and they _weren’t_ dreams, so I figured this would work better!” The phone line was silent.

“Is he talking to you?” Monica asked. Cor grunted an affirmative. “You need to work less hours,” she told him. He grunted again. Ardyn, as they had been talking, stood up and came over, pried Cor’s phone out of his hand, hung it up, tucked it back in his pocket, and grabbed Cor by the jaw.

“Do I look like a hallucination?” Ardyn said. Cor could see his ears being flattened by the hat, twitching.

“That’s what a hallucination would say,” he pointed out, to the part of his brain that was hallucinating his cat as a person. “I should not engage with hallucinations.”

“This,” Ardyn replied, “Is the stupidest conversation I have _ever_ had with a mortal. It’s like you’ve never seen a Cat spirit before.”

And, with that, he kissed Cor full on the mouth, and Cor realised several things in very quick succession:

1) This was not a hallucination.

2) He had never been dreaming of having sex with his cat, he had actually been having sex with his cat.

3) His cat had never been a cat in the first place, just an enterprising immortal who liked being fed tasty food and had imprinted on him.

4) _Monica would never fucking believe this._

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr and twitter @jonphaedrus


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